Crafting "The Humble Prose of Living": Rethinking Oral/Written Relations in the Echoes of Spoken Word

Dyson, Anne Haas

English Education, v37 n2 p149-164 Jan 2005

The art of spoken word has captured youthful spirits all over the country, especially in heterogeneous urban centers. In this essay, the author opens up for re-consideration a central issue in language arts education, one suggested by the very writing of spoken word: how educators think about the relationship between oral and written language and why that matters for what, how, and who they teach. She begins by tracing the dramatically different views on oral/written relationships that have been articulated in the language arts literature over the last 30 years. In this way, she aims to clarify the fresh perspective offered by the practice of, and scholarship on, spoken word. She then concentrates on the significance of this vision of oral/written relations for teaching and learning to write. To help her illustrate this significance, she calls on some child friends of her, children who, metaphorically, are the younger brothers and sisters of the students usually on stage in discussions of spoken word. The essay's star is Tionna, a first-grade participant in an ongoing study of child writing in a test-monitored central city school.